Software

Computer programs for chess composition

I’m going to speak about some of the most popular solving programs for chess composition. Of course, I can comment only the programs I use, so I’ll start from them. But first of all I’d like to tell THANK YOU! to all the programmers, who spends their time to write these programs, to improve them, to answer user’s questions and who still have to hear our critics sometimes…

I’m going to show on the examples (for Windows):

WinChloe

WinChloe is a software devoted to chess problems written by Christian Poisson. The program supports fairy pieces, conditions, shows themes, has a big database. It is really very powerful! Also, I’d like to add a comment that Mr. Poisson replies to the emails very promptly!

The advantages:

support of fairy stipulations

support of fairy pieces

support of fairy conditions and combinations of them

searches and shows themes

has graphical interface

has a database of more than 400 thousands problems

has options for filtering problems and adding queries

has diagram images in graphics and RTF(for publishing)

Problems, the users might experience:

not very friedly user interface (without a good help)

at one time can be used on one computer only (unless you buy the 2nd,…etc license to use it simultaneously)

in case of a crash of the program or your Windows, the program in some cases corrupts the database currently opened (do make backups often!!)

I’m going to show some actions you can do with this program, and also useful options and settings of it. Please also leave your comments/questions for me to know what might be useful to write about!

Ankona

Ankona is a web-based program for diagram imaging, storing and solving chess problems, written by Ilja Ketris (Latvia). The site ankona.ch is commissioned by the WFCC. The program uses web interface, has it’s own databases of problems and authors, uses popeye as a solving engine. So, at Ankonayou can use all the pieces and conditions which uses popeye. This is my lovely and primary soft.

The advantages

You can work with any web-browser from any computer to use the program